


Prayer in C

by TheCarmineWanker



Category: Winx Club
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25507270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCarmineWanker/pseuds/TheCarmineWanker
Summary: Bloom, Valtor, and forgiveness, or lack thereof. Based on the song Prayer in C by Lily Wood and The Prick.
Relationships: Bloom/Valtor | Baltor (Winx Club)
Kudos: 24





	1. 1

_Yeah, you never said a word  
You didn't send me no letter  
Don't think I could forgive you_  
...

A… _moment_ is what she would call it, shuddering with disgust. Had she the wherewithal to face the matter head on and deal with it like an adult, Bloom would have recognized that her disgust was with herself, not with her mortal enemy with whom she’d shared just shared that _moment_. Thank god she was still technically a teenager (18 totally still counts, right?) so she didn’t have to deal with things like an adult or, at least, this one problem.

Basically, she had decided to go after Valtor alone, like an idiot, as Stella had put it. He talked to her as they fought, though, which she hadn’t expected. She had no way of anticipating that, while they were lobbing the same fire at each other, he would tell her about how the witches created him and how, in the process, he was made to be their slave. She certainly could never have expected that, even if he did say something like that, it would elicit just enough sympathy to throw her off so that, in a few seconds, he would be able to gain control and pin her down.

Had she been able to predict all that, then the one thing she could have predicted would have been the part when she decided to try to reach him, offering to help free him from the witches and give him a second chance. Even then, she never could have foreseen that he would actually consider her offer. The one part of all of it that she truly expected the least was the way she almost kissed him, as he was caught off guard and she was still pinned under his body. It was perfectly natural, though, that that would it would be right then that Musa would blast through the wall, with Tecna and Layla in tow to rescue her. It was just as natural that, as soon as they did so, Valtor snapped out of it and went right back to being their enemy, while Bloom tried to pretend it didn’t bother her.

Now, a couple weeks later, they had encountered Valtor a few times and, each time, Bloom felt _strange_ in a way she refused to think about. Now that he was back to being their enemy, trying to murder her and her friends and destroy the entire universe and all that, she knew that she should not and could not be having _strange_ feelings for him. Try as she might, she couldn’t actually get rid of them, though, so she just got mad at him about it instead. She wasn’t actually mad about how, when the others arrived, he fought them, given that the situation forced him into a position where he had to fight back, just as much as she had been forced to turn against him in that moment.

No, she was mad because how _dare_ he make her want to kiss him and make her feel all _strange_. She was angry because, after the fight, he could have sought her out and taken her up on her offer but he just chose not to and she was even angrier because he hadn’t said anything to her since, aside from the normal taunting during their fights. The worst part, though, was how her rage fed the fire and made that strange feeling that much stronger. She could forgive him for most everything else if he truly repented, but she didn’t think she could forgive him for not saying a word, as though the _moment_ that plagued her mind night and day meant nothing to him, as though he didn’t have even a tiny bit of the feeling that wracked her whole body. After all, her guilt and confusion about all of it was what caused her to break up with Sky. Or, at least, that’s what she told herself.


	2. 2

_See our world is slowly dying  
I'm not wasting no more time  
Don't think I could believe you_  
...

He was in the process of trying to kickstart the apocalypse while she was trying to jumpstart her Enchantix. When they learned about the fairy form and, more importantly, the requirements for it, Bloom was upset. The universe was dying at the hands of Valtor and she couldn’t afford to waste time trying to find someone from Domino, who was still alive, to save on Domino. She thought about it a lot, trying to find a loophole and, eventually, thought of two: the dragon fire and her sister, Daphne. Given how the dragon fire was very much a living entity and its home was Domino, she figured that, maybe, if she, in some way, could save it, that she could get her Enchantix that way. Otherwise, she would have to find a way to resurrect the disembodied spirit of her sister.

Very much to her chagrin, the most obvious answer was Valtor. He was, after all, a corrupted spark of the dragon flame and if, on her home planet, she could to purify him, remove the witches’ corruption of him, then she might be able to get her Enchantix. Of course, the other side of that was that, if she could do that, she wouldn’t even need her Enchantix since she only needed it to defeat him in the first place. At any rate, it was much more feasible than resurrecting a ghost.

She made a plan with Faragonda and the others for her to go to Domino and lure him there. None of them actually liked her plan, her most of all, but they were all in agreement that it was really the only option. They knew he was spying on them, so she kept the details vague so he wouldn’t know her intentions. Likewise, since he would know if the rest were all there, she had to go alone. The boys from Red Fountain would drop her off and, then, after that, it was all up to her. Luckily for all of them, it actually worked.

As she poked around the castle ruins, Valtor showed up, alone. He had, as predicted, seen and heard most everything and knew that she would be there and that she wanted him there alone. Even though she hadn’t said as much at any point, he had expected that she just wanted to talk. What was surprising, however, was what she had to say.

See, Bloom had done her research on her home planet since it _was_ her home and she _was_ its last princess and the only surviving person from that world. In all that research, and in talking to Daphne, she had learned almost everything about the palace, including the Vortex of Flames. The Great Dragon itself, the same one that produced the original flame that burned inside Bloom and composed Valtor, resided in there. The Vortex was used as a way to test the dragon flame and its hosts so, after she checked it with Daphne, if anything would be able to purify the flame, it would be the Vortex.

She told Valtor that she stood by her initial offer, even with everything that had happened and that this was her best shot at helping him. He tried to wave her off, claimed that he didn’t actually want to be free from the witches, he even laughed but Bloom saw through it and stood her ground. She spoke plainly and bluntly, something that contrasted her soft nature, and told him that she didn’t believe him, that there was no way he could actually _want_ to be a slave. Then, after a while, he actually gave in and agreed to give it a shot. After all, even if he died in the Vortex, death would be better than living the rest of his immortal life as a slave.

Thankfully, it worked, though and, yes, Bloom got her Enchantix. After it was over, they took a moment to recover from the shock of it all before the boys showed up to give them a ride back to Alfea. They were surprised by the way things had turned out, to say the least, and had to be told by Bloom to stand down when they jumped right into attack mode as they landed. They weren’t exactly receptive to it when she told them that Valtor was good now and Timmy all but refused to pilot the ship if he would be on board. It took all the negotiation skills she had but she did manage to convince them, in the end. In light of that experience, she braced herself for their return to Alfea more than she had already.


	3. 3

_Yeah, our hands will get more wrinkled  
And our hair will be grey  
Don't think I could forgive you_  
...

Bloom was pleasantly surprised by how receptive the girls were to the new developments with Valtor. Faragonda seemed okay with it, too, even though she was a member of the original Company of Light. More than anything, everyone was just grateful that he was no longer the enemy. He was given a place to stay at the school and treated as a guest, mainly because he had had a meeting with Bloom and Faragonda in which he had agreed to help get rid of the Trix, resurrect Daphne, bring back Domino and all its inhabitants, and permanently destroy the ancestral witches.

Of the list of things he had promised to help with, the first that needed to be taken care of was the deposition of the Trix. They were still holding Cloud Tower under siege, essentially, with all the students and faculty still trapped there. As such, within a week of his arrival, Valtor led an attack on Cloud Tower, alongside the Winx, and defeated the Trix, permanently removing them from the tower and freeing Griffin from the prison Valtor had previously put her in.

As much as Faragonda and the Winx might have been on board with Valtor, Griffin certainly was not. Even after Valtor made quick work of the Trix and banished them in a way that would actually be permanent, she was very much against him. In the very loud argument she had with him, the girls learned that she had actually teamed up with him a while ago and had worked for the witches, so there was history there on top of what he had done more recently.

As much as she hated to admit it, knowing that irritated Bloom a bit. She was loath to admit it but she was actually _jealous_ of Griffin. Sure, she was older now, more wrinkled and all of that, but they had _history_ and did her current age really matter when Valtor was immortal? And, sure, it seemed that Griffin genuinely hated him but, then again, so had she. She knew what it was like to hate someone and have all that rage and hatred fuel other, more complicated feelings. Griffin said that she would never forgive Valtor for the things that he had done but how could Bloom fully believe that when she had said such similar things not too terribly long ago?

The jealousy really bothered Bloom. Until then, she could almost ignore what she was feeling as long as she could distract herself well enough but now that she actually was _jealous_ and had recognized the feeling, it was over for her. There was no going back to sweet denial and, for that, she fairly sure that she could never forgive the headmistress of Cloud Tower and that, this time, when she said that, she meant it.


	4. 4

_And see the children are starving  
And their houses were destroyed  
Don't think they could forgive you_  
...

Valtor proved to be a man of his word when, in a twist of sheer dramatic irony, he set off to help recover Domino and defeat the ancestral witches. They won the fight against the witches and succeeded pretty much only because Valtor was able to wield her father’s sword since, apparently, some of the dragon flame was put in it so, while Bloom could not since she was just a host of the flame, Valtor could since he _was_ part of the flame itself. With that development, everything else fell into place soon enough after.

But, before any of that, Bloom had saved Daphne, using her fairy dust. She knew about Valtor already, so she already knew what was going on when she returned to Alfea in her original body, with Bloom. Daphne certainly wasn’t ready to forgive him, but she was willing to accept his help and did trust him to be honest in his offer. As such, she was there with him and Bloom when they freed their parents and restored Domino.

Oritel and Marion sure were veritably shocked to find out that their daughters had teamed up with Valtor, of all people, to save them. However, much like Faragonda, they were relieved, more than anything, and grateful to be alive and with their daughters again and for their home and their people to have been restored. They did tell him, though, that while they might be accepting of this new change, that he should prepare himself for how the rest of their world might view him. After all, thanks to him, their world had been razed to the ground and those from Domino had been forced to watch the apocalypse, witness their home world being burned to a crisp, and then had been frozen for almost 20 years.

They were right to warn him, as Bloom soon discovered at the ball her parents hosted to celebrate the return and restoration of Domino. Some people were just grateful for Valtor’s help and some didn’t care about any of the details and were only concerned with the fact that they were alive again, but others were worse. She didn’t know what people were saying to him directly but, just based on what she was getting on her end, she knew it couldn’t be good. At best, among the critical, they would congratulate her on “taming the beast” and marvel at how she had “brought him to heel”. At worst, they said she was an evil whore, shacking up with the demon who destroyed them all as well as her family.

She would never say as much, but she kind of liked it when she got comments like the last one. They were horribly rude and mean-spirited, sure, but part of her got a bit of a thrill out of knowing that some people thought she was in a relationship with the gorgeous demon she had saved and who had then, in turn, restored to her everything that she had lost. She idly wondered what he thought of these claims, since she was sure he would be hearing them from the same people. She also pondered how people would react if she was, at some point, actually in an open relationship with him.

It wasn’t long that she had to wonder, though, as it was a ball and he did, eventually, ask her to dance. As cliche as she knew it sounded, she had never felt more alive than she did in that moment, when she was “dancing with the devil”, as she heard the people around them say. They chatted a bit as they danced, comparing notes on rude comments and sharing in their amusement over the current stares of gaping onlookers. Then, as the song was coming to an end, he surprised her by taking her hand and kissing the back of it. She almost choked at his action and how she felt as though his smoldering eyes were burning holes in her soul and, then, he let go of her hand and walked away like he hadn’t left her gasping for breath. As she accepted the hand of whoever it was that next asked her to dance, she decided that it might actually be perfectly reasonable for her people to be so mistrustful of Valtor since, clearly, he may yet take over Domino through conquering her.


	5. 5

_Hey, when seas will cover lands  
And when men will be no more  
Don't think you can forgive you  
  
_

_Yeah when there'll just be silence  
And when life will be over  
Don't think you will forgive you_  
...

In the years that followed all of that, Valtor proved himself over and over again and eventually won the favor of most people. Where people had initially accosted them, accusing her of being some harlot who was “consorting with the devil”, now, when they announced that they were actually in a relationship, the general public was fully supportive of the union between the two parts of the dragon flame. Bloom was perfectly happy; her birth parents, home planet, and sister had all been returned to her, her adoptive parents were still there as well and got along splendidly with the other half of her family, she had amazing friends and, now, she was in a solid relationship with the beautiful man who was directly responsible for half of that and was literally her other half.

The only issue she had was that Valtor didn’t seem quite as content. When he was alone with her, she knew he was but, whenever they were together in public, she could feel his unease. It bothered her and, when she tried to ask, he wouldn’t tell her what it was, until she realized it on her own- even with the support he had garnered, he was still on edge as though he was waiting for someone to speak out against him again or for those who had shown their support to revoke it.

When, having reached that conclusion, she went to talk to him about it, she learned that it wasn’t just what she had realized, it was also the overwhelming guilt he carried with him. He was fully aware of every single bad thing he had ever done and all the ways he could and should be punished, so he was simultaneously waiting for a lynching and feeling as though he was unable to fully atone for his sins until there was one. He was firmly stuck in a limbo, awaiting a punishment that would both destroy him and free him.

It upset Bloom to learn that she had been so worried about others’ forgiveness of Valtor when, all along, the real concern was his ability to forgive himself. More upsetting to her was knowing, if they couldn’t work together and fix it, that all through the rest of his very long immortal life, after all the worlds she’s known had been destroyed and he would be left alone in the ruins that he, then, would still carry that guilt. Well, she couldn’t allow that, and he needed to know he was wrong, so she told him.

She told him about how he had been willing to trust his mortal enemy and how he had been willing to risk death by throwing himself head first into the Vortex. She told him about how, thanks to him, she got her Enchantix and was then able to resurrect her sister and how he was able to wield her father’s sword and how, together, they brought back her parents and her planet. She told him how, in doing all of that, not to mention all the verbal abuse he suffered from the public without fighting back, he had not only completely atoned for his actions but he had actually undone the damage that had been done by him and the witches. More importantly, though, he actually listened. It wasn’t enough to immediately fix the problem, but it was enough to plant a seed and they both knew that, together, they could eventually get to the point where he could finally believe in his redemption and complete the quest for forgiveness.


End file.
